Violin lessons for early beginners in Mumbai

I teach violin to early beginners.

An early beginner is someone who has never held the violin in their hand to a Grade 2 - someone who can play in 1st position, with a fairly secure intonation.

I'm a candidate instructor for you If:

You have never held a violin in your hand before OR

Are an early stage student looking for a teacher.

I am looking to take classes either before I start my workday or after I finish my work day. That would be morning 8am to 9am or evening 8pm to 9pm. I work Saturdays as well. I intend to keep Sunday as a day off, but we can discuss.

I live in Vashi, Navi Mumbai and looking to take lessons in and around this area.

About me:

I began learning playing violin as an adult. I was about 22 years. But I already had experience playing the guitar (I was classical guitar grade 5 when I started the violin). I was forced to stop violin and guitar due to a snapped tendon in my 4th finger of the left hand. The injury happened while playing guitar.

In 2006 I moved to Dubai and later found a teacher from Europe (Belgium) where I continued to take lessons hoping by now my finger would have healed. I managed to give a grade 4 exam under her guidance but the finger continued to give problems again and in 2007 I gave up after my grade 4 ABRSM.

In early 2023, My brother-in-law who is a composer asked me if I would be able to play a few bars for him. I started practicing again after a gap of 16 years again in May, 2023.

That's when I opened the violin case and started practising again.

The damage to my 4th finger joint requires that I use only the first 3 fingers of my left hand and compensate using shifting. Luckily I learned about books by violin pedagogues like Otakar Sevcik, who are very methodical in their approach to learning violin. With a little bit of creativity in the fingering and shifting I have been able to use his works to make steady progress with just 3 fingers.

Another thing I found in my journey is when work pressure increased I was not practising as much as I planned. Sometimes a month would pass and I would not touch the violin. Hence I decided to find teacher, this would make me accountable for weekly practice. If you practice and show up every week, the long term progress would happen naturally.

A few notes about our Syllabus and approach:

The Goal here would be to secure a solid foundation for the left hand in 1st position.

We will initially use a combination of Eta-Cohen's books, WM Honeyman, Wohlfarht (Op 60) and Hans Sitt Op 32 Book 1 for our foundation along with Otakar Sevick Opus 1 Book 1 - exercises 1 to 12.

I use the Franco-Belgium bow hold which was taught to me by my teacher from Belgium.

About the Class timing length and what will be covered:

The class will be of 1 hour duration. I will come to your house to teach you. I live in the Vashi area of Navi Mumbai so I'm looking for students primarly in Vashi or close to Vashi.

Your progress will be rapid if you just practice for atleast 20 minutes every day and show up for class every week.

I will lay out a practice regimen for you. I will also teach the music theory that you need so that you can read the music that you are playing.

About learning the violin:

People say learning the violin is hard. During my inital years I did not face any difficulty learning the instrument, probably because I was already a grade 5 guitarist when I started my violin journey. However when i was beginning to learn guitar , it was a struggle. Left hand right hand co-ordination, playing chords, smooth transition of chords, playing in higher positions and learning to sight read - was all hard.

I think fluent sight reading took more than 2 years.

Irrespective of the above anecdote you need to have a very solid technique backing you up when learning the violin. I will explain below.

If you look at the piano, all keys have a uniform size and they follow a uniform pattern.

When we come to the guitar, things are a bit different. If you notice the distances between the frets they get smaller and smaller as you go nearer to the bridge. These are the laws of physics at work here. When you half the length of the string, the frequency doubles. In this respect the guitar and the piano are different. But the guitarist has a safety net, the frets are there to guarantee the correct intonation.

When we come to the violin, even the safety net of the frets is also gone. The substitute now instead of the frets is the accuracy of the players finger placement. So there are 2 moving parts here:

• As you go closer to the bridge the distances between notes are getting closer.
• There are no frets, the left hand frame is trained to form various shapes, and brings the fingers down in accurate block patterns, following technique built upon technique to deliver an accurate and pleasing performance.

To this day I remember asking my teacher in Dubai during my first or 2nd lesson with her.

I said my teacher in India always told me, If you put the second finger down, the first finger must be down. Similarly, if you put the 3rd finger down, the 1st and 2nd finger must be down.

And she replied he was absolutely correct.

The second implication of your fingers functioning in the role of frets is : the accuracy demands that you listen to your playing very carefully and be able to identify if you are playing in tune or not.

If you want to listen carefully, you will also have to sing. Not sing a song, or sing beautifully , but sing the notes you are playing. This is just the way the brain works. Learning from multiple dimensions will train you faster.

How much progress can you expect to make? And how fast

The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and the Trinity College of Music have established a graded series of exams which allow you benchmark your progress.

Even if you have no intention of giving the music exams, nothing stops us from using their syllabus to benchmark our progress.

The ABRSM estimates about 40 hrs of practice to achieve an initial grade. If we take initial practice of 20 minutes a day , 40 hours of practice translates into about 120 consecutive days of practice or about 4 months.

The total qualifying time for grade 1 is put at 60 hours. Again at about 20 minutes a day that would be 180 days or about 6 months of consecutive practice of about 20 minutes a day.

The estimated qualifying time for a grade 2 exam would be about 90 hours. At about 20 minutes a day that would be about 270 days. So a grade 2 would be atleast 9 months away from a grade 1.

So you can expect to reach a grade 2 level after about 19 months of starting learning violin if you practice 20 minutes a day every single day. That would be a very tall ask. More realistic would be about 2 years.

A grade 2 ABRSM would not be enough to secure your hand in the 1st position.

You would need in addition exercises from books like Sevcik Opus 1, etudes from Wohlfarht, Opus 45 and Sitt Opus 32 Book 1, to have your hand securely set.

You would need to do scales in atleast the following keys : C, G, F, D, B-flat, A, E-flat, E and A-flat keys, you would need to do both the major and minor scales.

You would expect this to be atleast another year away from Grade 2 but still in 1st position.

I would consider the above to be a solid foundation for a beginner